My Sister's Choice!

One of the items that I originally listed on the 2013 New FO Challenge was Bonnie Hunter's Sister's Choice quilt.  This is a lovely quilt that is on the Free Patterns! tab of her blog.  It can be found here.  She was or looking for something to do with her over flowing bin of 2 1/2" scrap strips!  As I have been using Bonnie's Scrap User's System since I started quilting, I too had many strips in my 2 1/2" drawer.  This seemed like a perfect quilt for me since I've been quilting for less that a year.

 This is a picture of Bonnie's Sister's Choice quilt that she has on the bed in her guest room.  I hope mine ends up looking as good at hers.

 I only had 8 blocks made so far, but I really was happy with how the blocks were turning out.  I have been using the same neutral fabric for the background and the same green fabric for the star points.

 

 I am up to 52 blocks now and have had to switch to a different neutral twice since I used all of the first two up that I had in my stash.  I use a safety pin to group 10 blocks together, so I don't have to keep counting how many I have.  I have a few more 9-patches sewn together, but those will have to wait until after Easter for me to be able finish them. 

I still haven't decided how I will finish the quilt.  Bonnie didn't use any sashing and just sewed the 72 blocks together 8 X 9.  She used a 1 1/2" inner border and a 5" outer border.  In making all of the flippy corners, I ended up with MANY bonus HST's.  For now I've just stuck them in an extra drawer but I think I might use them to do some kind of a border with. 

Happy Good Friday everyone and hope that you have a very Happy Easter!  To link back to the others participating in the new 2013 New FO Challenge, click here.

February New FO Challenge

Well, it's that time of month again.  It's a good thing that I decided to do a small doll quilt this month for my New FO Challenge.  It was a cute little thing that I found called Card Trick Doll Quilt that was included with Alice and a Rabbit.  These were a gift for signing up for the newsletter at Patchwork Posse!

 I had never made the Card Trick quilt block before and it really looked interesting.  Besides, my hubby said that he really liked this little red, black and white quilt.

And because this challenge didn't require these things to be finished, I just pinned the little doll quilt up on my wall.  I like it here so that I can see it while I'm working at my computer.  Oh, I couldn't resisting adding a picture of my cat.  I recently got a little cordless vacuum that I use for cleaning around the cat box.  Popeye absolutely loves boxes and he just has to play with them before they get recycled.

He couldn't resist crawling in and just laid there for the longest time!

My Dash of Pink

I started out looking for something to make to hang on the wall that I could look at while sitting at my computer.  This was one of the items I had listed as wanting to do on the 2013 New FO Challenge.

I found the Dash of Pink project at  www.allpeoplequilt.com which is a Better Homes and Gardens Network Site.  They have quite a few projects, patterns and how to articles and this one got my attention.  A Dash of Pink was inspired by “Dash of Summer” by designer Tara Lynn Darr.

I got the center made using only fabric from my stash and was very happy with it.  I had thought to use the pink print from the center or the churn dash block as the inner border.  When I asked hubby his opinion, he said that he liked the red one instead, so that's the one I used.

When I finished with both borders, I draped it across the back of our couch and found that I really liked it there!  I'm still working on it because I have to find fabric for the backing, but I think I'm going to have to go hunting for something else to put on my wall.  My hubby said that he like this one best of all my quilting.  I guess it will probably have to stay on the couch!

To link back to the others participating in the new 2013 New FO Challenge, click here.

Almost finished with Easy Street

It has been quite the trip down Easy Street and the last two parts really brought The Big Finale!

Pieced Triangle 1 -  9 individual pieces & blocks - Make 4!  These are the 4 corners of the quilt.
Pieced Triangle 2 - 15 individual pieces & blocks - Make 12!  These are the rest of the borders.
Pieced Block A -  25 individual pieces & blocks - Make 16! These are in 4 X 4 layout on point!
Pieced Block B -  25 individual pieces & blocks - Make 9!  These are the alternate blocks.

I still have the rows for last five  "B" blocks that I still need to put together before I can start sewing all of the pieces together.  I've laid them out and am pretty excited about how they look.

I like the way the green squares run across the quilt from left to right and up and down.  This is going to end up being a very large quilt.










 My daughter doesn't know it, but I'm planning on making it a gift for her.  She knows I'm making it and suggested purple for the border.







Check out Quiltville for others posting Easy Street progress!

Easy Street Part 6

Once again, I was still up when the latest clue was posted.  This looks like a pretty easy one!  We have to make 128 Double Bricks made up of  two 2” black-on-white strips sewn together then cut into 3-1/2” lengths.  This will make the Double Bricks 3-1/2” squares.  Bonnie said that if we only had one fabric left that we could just cut 3-1/2” squares, but I managed to find just enough black-on-white fabric to make the required blocks.

Bonnie also assigned some Extra Credit!   We need to cut 16 5-1/2” squares from the green fabric.  Then stack them and cut them corner to corner twice with an X to yield 64 quarter square triangles.  Well, I manged to get them all done!

There will be NO Mystery Monday Link because we on our way to a RAPID FIRE FINISH!
Clue 7 goes live on Monday morning instead!  The next Link-Up will be the following Monday.
I'm really looking forward to Monday's accelerated step 7.

Easy Street Part 5

I stayed up real late again Thursday night so I could get a look at the newest clue for Easy Street!  From turquoise scraps we need to cut 64 3-1/2” squares and from purple scraps cut 128 2” squares.  That sounds pretty easy.  Then we need to pair two purple squares  to each 3-1/2” turquoise square the same way we did with flying geese.  Not sure what this block is going to be called.  Bonnie called them tall flying geese or maybe they are sitting turkeys.  I think I remember seeing other names!  Anyway, I got my fabrics cut:

Suzi Porter called them squatting Turkeys!  Well whatever they are, I spent Saturday afternoon putting these blocks together.  I went ahead and double sewed the purples for bonus triangles.  They made 1-1/2" HSTs.  I use 1-1/2" strips quite a bit, so I thought these would be good for something.

 I'm ready for the next clue, but I still have some additional Christmas sewing to do.  I hope that everyone has a wonder Christmas!  

2013 New FO Challenge

Today while I was following along on bloggers that are doing the Bonnie Hunter "Easy Street" mystery quilt and I came across a post by Thimble Mouse of Country Crossroads saying that there was a post from Barbara at Cat Patches inviting any and all of us to join her for the 2013 New FO Challenge.

Now I am new to quilting AND blogging, so I wasn't real sure what that was.  Lynn seemed excited about it so I thought I would check it out.  It turns out that Barbara started up a NewFO Challenge to give us an opportunity to build up our supply of UFO's!  Well, I sure don't have many UFO's so I thought I'd join.

Here's what I need to do:  Each month, start up at least one new quilt project of any size and I do NOT need to complete it during the year.  All I need to do to participate is start something new during any given month.  On the last day of the month, I have to write a blog post about my new project and link up to Barbara's linky party.

1.  Sister's Choice quilt for my bed.  It's a quilt designed by Bonnie Hunter.

2.  I want to make a table runner for the table behind my couch. (The one I had previously made was given to my daughter and I want another one).

3.  I want to make a small quilt for my wall that I can see when sitting at my computer.